


Selfless

by 91bil



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Michael and Raphael - Not Tsumugi and Tasuku, Play fic, Play: Sympathy for the Angel (A3!)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:28:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28546365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/91bil/pseuds/91bil
Summary: Michael once told Raphael that true love is selfless.When the dust settles, Raphael doubts that’s true.
Relationships: Michael/Raphael, Michael/Raphael (Sympathy for the Angel)
Kudos: 17





	Selfless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rhilicious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhilicious/gifts).



Michael once told me true love was selfless. That devoting yourself to someone is the purest form of love there is. He would compare it to the ocean, to the waves as they push and they pull. He’d compare it to air, to breathing, to  _ oxygen.  _ It’s something he can’t live without, he’d say, and turn to me. ‘Don’t you get it too?’

Michael is a fool. 

Love is selfish. It’s cruel and unforgiving. It is the waves that pull you in and keep you under, drowning you, losing you. It is suffocating. I know all of this well. I knew this as he descended into the human realm and I know this now as I lift his soul up, taking it too soon, holding it too tight. He is a fool. His love is selfish. I am selfish.

He was happy. I was happy, if only for his joy, if only for the way he smiled at each letter. I was content if he could not be mine, for he was still there, and he was still within reach. He descended again and again and  _ again  _ and I could do little more than watch as he slipped through my fingers. I hate the woman in the human world. I hate how she could never understand the sacrifice that Michael had made for her. She was blessed by his presence and his grace yet still she was captivated by another, and still she cost him his life, and still he loved her. He was selfish. 

There is nothing the other angels can tell me.

There is nothing left to be said.

Gracious and noble Michael was he, and I, simple Raphael. 

I wonder which virtues the world has lost. No longer does Heaven have the honour of his smile, no longer does it have the prestige of his laugh. It is a cruel thing to be separated from. It floats endlessly in my ears and whispers to me in my dreams, and try as I might I cannot escape it, and try as I might I would not want to. It is the only thing I have left of him. 

I wait at the gates each day in hopes he will return, but I know he will not, and it is a fool’s errand. I once made fun of him for this very thing. There is nothing I wouldn’t give to see his face again. 

I gaze at the woman sometimes. I gaze at Phillip. I gaze at the lives of everyone he has touched and I see him in all of them. It hurts. I look away. His light is within them all and yet he has left me nothing but grief. I cannot bring myself to hate him. I never can. 

“Michael,” I lament. There is no one to hear me. “My dearest friend.”

He is not my love. The word will never be strong enough, and will never contain my feelings for him. He is not my love but an extension of myself, the key to a part of me inaccessible to anyone else. He was my heart and he was my soul. He was my fool. He was my everything. 

And now he is nothing but a memory. A light in the expansive darkness. He is the phantom around every corner, the silence in the room, the peace of the night and the vibrance of the morning. He is everywhere and he is nowhere, and I miss him more than anything else. There can be no tides without the moon, and my waters have stilled, lost without him. I was never good at subtly. The world felt too grand and expansive to restrict myself. Michael tethered me to reality. I am adrift without him. 

I have lost my dearest friend and my greatest love. I have been selfish. I have loved and I have lost and I have continued on in spite of it.

True love is selfish. It is the thrum of your heart when you look at them; it is the way the world melts when they smile. It is the way you will do anything for them if it means you can see them shine brightly again, and it is the way you can never let go, and never hate them, no matter how foolish they are. My love for Michael burned brighter than flames and were extinguished just as fast, and though fate is cruel, I will hold him in my heart, and I will continue on his work. 

My gracious Michael. I am forever your simple fool. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to my friend, rhilicious, who has some of the most beautiful thoughts on love that I have ever had the honour of reading. She is Michael through and through, and though I may align more with Raphael, I could listen to her thoughts on the matter all day. She’s insanely talented, too, and I encourage anyone who may be reading this to go and see what she writes, for it leaves me speechless every time.


End file.
